Page 43

We ended up at a small café for a light lunch. Tristan stuck to meaningless conversation until we got our food and ate in silence. Afterward, we headed to Meridian Hill Park. It was Saturday, so, despite the season, the park was full of people walking their dogs or just walking, like us.

Tristan glanced at me. “Tell me about your parents.”

The request caught me off guard. With all the paranormal drama of his world, my life seemed small by comparison. “Not much to tell. My dad's from Osaka. My mom grew up outside Cleveland.”

“How did they meet?”

“Mom went to Japan right after college. A graduation trip. She was supposed to be there for two weeks. She stayed for four months.”

“Because of your father.”

“Yup. She always tells it like it was inevitable, like the universe had been planning it. That's why they named me Destiny. She got lost trying to find a train station, and he was the only person around who spoke enough English to help her. It turned into a very long conversation, and then dinner, and then four months.” I smiled, thinking of the framed photo on my parents' mantel—my mom squinting into the sun outside a shrine, my dad beside her looking a little confused and very smitten. “He proposed before she flew home. She said yes and then spent the entire flight back to Ohio wondering if she'd lost her mind.”

“Had she?”

“No, it was the best decision she ever made, according to her. Though she'll also tell you it terrified her, marrying someone from a completely different world, moving across an ocean to become a part of that world, and learning a new language so she could speak to my grandma.” I looked out at a tiered fountain as we stopped before it. “I've been thinking about it a lot lately. How much courage it takes to choose someone when it includes a life you don't understand yet.”

Tristan didn't say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I'd gotten too ahead of myself.

“I haven't thought about my parents in a long time.”

“But you still remember them.”

“Vividly.” He grinned at me. “My mother wove cloth. My father was a blacksmith. They weren't anyone of import. History does not remember them.”

“They were important to you. You remember them, and you will remember them forever. That's more than anyone can hope for.”

Tristan took my hand. “You're right. I am their legacy. They are my history.”

“What were they like?” We resumed walking.

“My mother sang while she worked. Badly. She knew it was bad and did it anyway, and my father pretended not to mind because he loved her and because complaining would have accomplished nothing except making her sing louder out of spite.” His gaze went distant. “My father was quiet. Practical. He taught me to be patient, a skill that has been invaluable over the years. He said even the strongest metal will bend if you keep working it.”

“Do you remember their faces?”

“I remember everything about them. My mother had a callus on her left thumb from the loom. I used to trace it with my finger when I was small enough to fit in her lap. My father always seemed enormous to me, even after I became a man. He had broad shoulders.”

“How did they die?”

“Fever. The same year, within a season of each other, before Heartbreak had anything to do with me. I'm grateful they didn't live to see me Heartbreak take me. They would have been the Curse's first victims. Well, after me.” He cleared his throat. “I was seventeen when they died. I buried them both myself because when mother went, my father was too ill to help. Then it was just me, and I remember thinking grief was the largest thing I would ever feel. That nothing could possibly be worse.”

“And then Heartbreak found you and made your life about grief.”

“It's only one type of grief, but yes. It took me a few years later.”

“A few years? But that would mean you were around twenty.”

He grimaced. “I know I look older. Times were harder back then. People only lived to thirty at the most.”

“Oh! Yes, of course. I knew that. I never considered how life would age a person faster as well. Thirty years and that's it.” I shook my head.

“Yes, to my parents, eighty years would have been magical, much less seventeen hundred.” Sorrow flashed across Tristan's face and then was gone. “I think that's part of why Heartbreak wanted me. I already understood loss. I knew what it did to a person, how it hollowed out a house, a life. Heartbreak didn't have to teach me anything. It only had to widen my scope.”

“And here I was thinking it was your handsome face.”

“That too.” He led me to a bench, and we sat down. “It wanted a strong body and an attractive face, just as people like to live in nice houses.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So, Heartbreak chose you because you look like a heartbreaker?”